


Martha Jones' Great American Road Trip

by strix_alba



Category: Community (TV), Doctor Who (2005), Glee, House M.D., Supernatural, Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Year That Never Was
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 20:40:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strix_alba/pseuds/strix_alba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martha Jones walks the Earth. Sometimes she has close calls, and often she finds herself fighting for her life. Mostly, though, she talks to people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Santa Monica, California

**Author's Note:**

> Each chapter is written as a standalone work centered around a different fandom, so nothing will be lost by skipping sections.
> 
> According to my calculations, the Year that Never Was began at the end of Season 4 of House, Season 3 of Supernatural, and several months before Community and Glee began airing. House’s team just left him, Dean just went to hell, and nothing from Community or Glee will happen for another year. Annie either just got out of psychiatric treatment, or fled during the Toclafane decimation. For Young Wizards, I went by publishing date, which means that the story falls between Wizards at War and A Wizard of Mars. And if any of these are wrong, call it artistic license?
> 
> Thank you ever so much to radio_silent and looselipssinksubs for the betaing, and additional thanks to Sara for cheerleading and having character feels with me.

The woman who meets her in the ruins of Santa Monica has black eyes. The scarred Australian man whose boat had brought her across the ocean had warned her about that in advance — not a name to ask for, just that the woman would have eyes like ink — so Martha swallows the rush of panic and doesn't run when she sees her, though she still crosses the deserted road with caution. “Martha Jones,” says the woman, when they are within speaking distance of each other. “I’ve been expecting you.”

"Same," says Martha. "What's your name, then? Joe just told me to look for …" She gestures at her own eyes.

The woman smirks, and her eyes flicker clear. "I’m Ruby. I’ll be your escort." She spreads her arms wide, smile stretching further. "Welcome to America!"

Martha gives her an uncertain grin. "Thanks," she says. Nine and a half months of the Master's rule has changed the people she meets, made cynicism common and gallows humor ubiquitous. She's encountered everything from hopelessness to those who have exchanged hopelessness for a sort of bitter resolve, and thrown themselves into fleet construction; to those who live every day like the fight is still going on. She has had yet to meet someone who seems to be utterly unconcerned by the destruction of the planet, but it seems the impossible just happened. "Look, if you don’t mind me asking, what's going on with your eyes? Is it some sort of third eyelid, like a UV-blocking thing …"

Ruby gives her a look, as though she really should know better, which is unfair. Martha has seen some of the wonders of the universe, but only some of them; the universe is a big place, and she can't be expected to be intimately familiar with every humanoid alien that she comes across. "First you have to swear you're not going to exorcise me. I'm on your side. I've got references." She tilts her head to the side. "Reference. The other one wouldn't listen to me. He’s dead now." Her mouth twitches with something that might be regret.

"Okay, not helping your argument," Martha points out.

Ruby's hands fall to her sides. "I'm a demon. The meat suit was in a coma, I didn't jack anything useable this time around."

Which sets aside precisely none of Martha's uneasiness, only adds a load of confusion on top. "A – demon. From … where?"

“Earth, dummy. Come on, I've got a car. We're going to Hollywood!” She throws a fist into the air like she expects her enthusiasm to be contagious. Martha continues to watch her. It isn't that she hasn't encountered other aliens stranded on Earth when the Toclafane attacked, now no longer able to get home. There have been at least a dozen of them, though she understands that the Toclafane have weeded most of them out. There's no place for freeloaders on the Master's new pet planet.

No. It's not the alien aspect that bothers Martha. It's that Ruby is, in other ways, wrong. An appearance of nonchalance is one thing, and Martha has seen plenty of that, but it isn't possible to wander through post-apocalyptic wasteland for half a year without learning to recognize the tells that belie the mask: blank stares when no one is looking, expressions that don’t reach their eyes, jumping at things that shouldn't be sources of fear. Ruby either has none of those, or she’s better at hiding them than anyone Martha has ever met. It makes Martha jumpier than usual after thirty seconds with the woman; she can only hope that it doesn't scrape her nerves even closer to the breaking point.

"All right," she says. "Take me to the people."

Ruby's car, it turns out, is a red convertible, mint condition, parked in the entrance to the garage next door. Martha looks it over critically. "Are you sure this isn't too … I dunno, flashy?" she asks. There aren't any Toclafane here, because Santa Monica was burned and abandoned months ago, but Los Angeles is still mostly standing, from what she understands. And where there are people, there are whizzing metal spheres overhead.

Ruby climbs into the driver's seat without bothering to open the door. "Nope. Demon. Check it out." She holds out her wrist for Martha's inspection. Martha opens the passenger-side door and slides in next to her, taking the proffered wrist. She isn't sure what she's supposed to be doing, aside from admiring the delicate bone structure, but after a few seconds, she frowns. She readjusts her grip, sliding her first two fingers over the inside of her wrist, and waits for five or six seconds more. The skin remains lukewarm under her touch.

"No pulse," Ruby announces, with apparent pride. "No pulse, no heat sensors for me. The Toclafane, whoever they are, don't give a crap about a dead body." Her eyes flicker black for a moment. "It's you we've got to worry about. How'd you make it this far without getting caught?"

Martha hesitates before she lifts the key out from underneath her shirt. "It's linked to the Archangel network; as long as I'm wearing it, I can't get noticed. Not invisible, like, just … hard to spot."

Ruby bends in closer to inspect it, and Martha tries not to fidget. She is very conscious of the breath that is _not_ hitting the back of her hand, despite their proximity. "Are you sure? I saw you just fine," Ruby says, leaning back. “Not that I care about you personally, but I’ve got a lot riding on you not dying.”

"You knew I'd be here. You were looking for me," Martha replies. "Now, are you taking me, or not?”

Ruby starts the car, filling the air with a deep rumbling. "Whatever you say, honey."

&

The first time that the Toclafane fly over to the bright red car and require identification, Martha nearly has a heart attack. She sits frozen in place while Ruby ignores the road in favor of taking an excessive amount of time to dig through the laundry bag at her feet. Martha moves only to grab the wheel and pull them around a curb before they drive into a ditch; Ruby hums something under her breath that might be "Thanks" but might also be the opening bars to Here Comes the Bride. She picks her head up and waves a piece of very crinkled paper around at the Toclafane hovering outside of the car. "Here," she says.

The Toclafane puts out a green beam of light from one of its nodes that scans the paper. It says nothing, but flies away and doesn’t come back, so Martha assumes that whatever Ruby fed it was acceptable. She squints at the paper, trying to figure out what it is.

"Death certificate for the stiff," Ruby says, as though she can tell what Martha is thinking; and for all that Martha knows, she can. "Told you: no one cares what the demons get up to; they assume that the quick aren’t going to pal around with the dead. That’s why the people love me.”

"Who does?" Martha has met many different groups in her travels across the globe, from official organizations that simply adapted their goals to the crisis, to a network of wizards that extended across the entire Indian subcontinent, to some very odd _shinigami_ in Japan. Organizations know people, and make it easier for her to get where she needs to go, in the company of people who will help her do her work. However, she’d been flying solo across most of the Pacific, and she’d been given to understand that the woman she was meeting was something of a loose end.

Ruby tosses her hair back over her shoulder, though the wind promptly whips it back into her face, and finally returns her attention to the road ahead of them. "Everyone. I’m a hot commodity here in California ‘cause I don’t like Mr. Saxon any more than you do. Most demons are thrilled with him. I guess he reminds them of their daddy."

Martha can guess who she’s talking about, but she does not have the energy to talk about it right now. She files it away into the list of other potential threats to look into once this is over. "And? If all of your people support the Master, what makes you different?"

"I’ve got people I need to keep alive," Ruby says, nebulously. "Alive, and eventually able to leave the house without getting fried by alien lasers. So far, you’re the best shot I’ve got. I’d be an idiot not to help you."

"Family?” Martha asks. She supposes that it’s better to know in advance whether an ally is likely to cut and run as soon as the grass on the other side gets greener, rather than finding out after the fact. It's not only loneliness that drives her to befriend the people she meets.

Ruby steps on the gas as the dusty, broken-down buildings of Los Angeles come into view. She slings one arm onto the seat behind Martha’s head, in a ridiculous parody of companionability. "I’m a demon. I don’t have a family. I’ve got a boyfriend." She grins. "Wow, that sounds modern. Back in my day, we had dowries and bride prices and shit. The times, they are a’changing."

Martha drags an unwilling smile to her lips. "You're telling me."

&

Martha and Ruby take nearly three days to work their way through the most densely populated areas in Southern California. "If you give me directions, I’m sure I can make it to the other meeting points on my own," Martha tells her, when she wakes up in an abandoned apartment to find the demon perched on the coffee table with black eyes and an amused expression.

"Nah, I wouldn't abandon you. I'm invested, remember?" says Ruby. 

Martha's skin crawls. She has a sudden image of Ruby, walking one foot behind her with her constant stream of too-flippant observations at every single shelter and community center she visits. "It's the same thing, over and over," she says.

“Yeah, but you think you’re the only one who can tell stories?" Ruby asks. Martha blinks at the non sequitur. "I’ve got a good one about a man and an apple, if you want to hear it."

Martha yawns, and digs through her overtired brain until she finds the reference. "No thanks; I’m good."

Ruby shrugs and gets to her feet. "Your loss. You still don’t have to do this on your own. You’ve got hordes of admirers across the continent who are going to use your little mind-trick, and I get that you’ve got an appointment for Saxon in Samarra, but aren’t you skipping over pretty huge chunks of real estate?" She waves a hand around out the window. "Canada, maybe? Texas?"

“Who says I’m not going to Canada?”

“You’re not going to Canada for the same reason that the Field of Megiddo isn’t in Australia,’ Ruby says. ‘It ain’t worth the hike.” She leans over Martha, smirking, and adds, “For you, anyway.”

Martha slides towards the other end of the couch and stands up, putting distance between them. It’s too early in the day for mind games on top of everything else. “And for you?”

Ruby vanishes, in a rush of wind and sulfur that starts at her feet and winds its way up her body so that for a moment, she is a disembodied, grinning head. Martha swears and lunges forwards to grab her, but her hand goes through the demon woman like smoke.

“No problem,” says Ruby from behind her.

Martha whirls around. Ruby is standing on the other side of the couch, holding out a kiwi. When Martha fails to take it, she tosses it at her instead.

“Where’d you get this?” Martha asks, turning it over in her hands.

“New Zealand.” Ruby vaults over the back of the couch and collapses onto the cushions. She tosses the blanket off the couch and kicks her booted feet up on the arm, heedless of the mud tracks the heels leave on the plush grey fabric.

Martha crosses her arms. She is aware of her tactical disadvantages regardless of how relaxed and defenseless Ruby looks, but it still makes her feel better to stand over her rather than face to face. “How? Is it some sort of hidden transmat?” Although, eyes raking over the lounging demon, she can find few places with enough extra room for a hidden anything.

“It’s called being awesome,” Ruby says. She flings a hand out at the coffee table, bracelet clattering on the glass as she gropes around for the remote control without looking. Martha continues to watch her in stony silence, until Ruby sighs. ‘It’s a demon thing. A very high-level demon thing, and if you breathe a word about it to anyone, I’ll possess you, jump off a cliff, and leave you there to die,” she drawls.

“Whatever you say,” says Martha, matching her tone of bored disinterest. “You need me.”

“And you need me.” Ruby’s fingers curl around the remote, but when she turns on the television, the only station that comes in is the news. She scowls at the screen, pouting, until Martha puts the kiwi down on the table and moves between her and the screen. Ruby continues to pout and hit buttons at Martha.

Martha successfully suppresses the urge to snatch it out of her hand. “Okay.”

Ruby rolls her eyes and swings her feet around, planting them on the floor with a clunk. “I’m offering to help you. Out of the goodness of my heart, I might add. Nothing in this for me. Once we’re done here, I can get Canada for you. Or South America, if you’re in a hurry. Just not, like, Antarctica or anything. I draw the line at penguins.”

“And you need to follow me around now …”

“Well, if I’m going to go around saving people,” — Martha ignores the way that she makes it sound like an epithet — “I’ve got to do it right. Don’t want everyone standing around two days early; that’d really screw things up.” She pulls a face.

Martha blinks at her a couple of times. She tilts her head to the side. “Nope, still not following you.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. I’m memorizing your little love song to the Doctor so I can say it right. I do better with the planning and scheming, not so much with the repeating heroic speeches thing.”

Martha thinks it over, a process made all the more difficult by the weight of Ruby’s gaze. A voice in more of America, from someone who could travel without fearing capture, would certainly help her, and make her journey shorter — she could spend more time traveling around Africa before her appointment in England, and Ruby could cover far more territory than she could in that time.

It’s just that … she doesn’t trust Ruby. Quite aside from being a demon — because Martha has traveled the universe for too long to make the mistake of assuming anything about a person’s character based on their species — Ruby is self-interested to the extreme, with no real reason to go above and beyond the call of duty, and as she says, isn’t the model of a heroic speech-maker.

However, she also has other plans to set in motion, plans of the decidedly more schemer-friendly variety. She holds out a hand to Ruby and pulls her to her feet. “All right then. If you want to help, there’s something else I need you to do.”

“Of course.”

Martha takes a deep breath. If she’s wrong, she’s about to screw herself over royally. She just has to hope that the game will be interesting enough. “I can’t count on the Master just not finding out what I’m doing,” she says. She’d realized this somewhere in Japan, just before the Toclafane arrived there in force. “He’s too clever, and it’s too dangerous.”

The corners of Ruby’s mouth turn up. “So you want me to switch sides and feed him false information? ‘Cause I can totally do that. It’s kind of my thing.”

Martha returns the smirk, and hopes it looks natural. “Sort of. I had this idea, you see, for a weapon …”


	2. Greendale County, Colorado

Ruby drops her off outside of a high school gymnasium that, structurally speaking, seems to have remained relatively untouched by the Toclafane’s initial decimation. “This is as far as I go. Now it’s off to England for me. Four parts, you said?” Martha nods. “Can do. See you around,” says Ruby.

“Yeah. I’ll see you.” Martha tugs on the straps of her backpack, hopping on her heels and trying not to show her relief at being able to leave the demon’s presence. She is against the Master and the Toclafane, and the enemy of her enemy is her friend, so she isn’t about to argue with the assistance that she has provided. Still, she breathes easier when Ruby throws her a lazy salute, hops back in her car, and peels out of the parking lot.

There are no signs of human life in the parking lot, but that doesn’t mean anything; anyone who isn’t at work in the shipyards, or the mines, or the factories, stays out of the open air as much as possible. She checks to make sure that the key is still safely around her neck before she walks up to the side door of the gym. Three Toclafane whizz by overhead, and her fingers tighten around the key. Only when they are out of sight does she knock on the door.

A scruffy-looking blonde man opens it enough to wedge his head and shoulders out the door. “Hey,” he says, over the background thumps and chattering that pours out the door after him. “Hi! What’s up? Who are you?”

“I’m Martha. Martha Jones?” Most people she’s met since she left Italy have heard of her, and it makes her passage easier; people listen to the Famous Martha Jones where they won’t listen to a stranger asking them to listen to a story.

The mistrust clears off of his face, and turns into a lunatic grin. “Oh my god. Oh my god. Hey, everybody!” He turns around and shouts back into the gymnasium. “Everybody, it’s Martha Jones! It’s Martha! She’s here! Martha Jones came to Riverside!” He doesn’t open the door any further, but grabs her by the arm and drags her inside and into a hug. Martha lets herself fall into it: whoever he is, he’s happy to see her, and for all that he smells of sweat and metal, it’s been a long, long time since she has received any sort of physical affection. She wraps her arms around him and allows herself a small smile.

“Who’re you, then?” she asks, when he releases her.

“Vaughn. Come on in.”

Several hundred people appear to have made the gymnasium their shelter; there are mats spread out on the ground, the kind used in high school gymnastics and probably pulled from the storage closets, and blankets have been piled in heaps to demarcate family groups. The school is still running, under the Master’s orders as Martha supposes, but it doesn’t appear that they’ll be using their gym anytime soon. She follows Vaughn past rows of water coolers on a table littered with paper cups in fallen-over stacks and crumpled heaps; past a group of small children chasing each other around in dizzying circles while their parents try in vain to keep them in some sort of order. As they walk, Vaughn waves his arms in huge semaphore-like sweeps to get everyone’s attention, and gradually, gradually, the din subsides. People set aside from what they were doing to stare at her. Martha knows what she must look like: dressed head to toe in black, with her jet pack strapped across her back and around her waist like some sort of futuristic commuter. Which, in a way, she supposes that she is.

“We’re supposed to let the Big Cheese know if anyone shows up, but I don’t think he’ll be expecting you,” Vaughn tells her, still beaming.

Martha laughs uncertainly. “The Big Cheese?”

Before he has time to answer her, a slim, dark young man in a white shirt with a black vest walks out of a door at the opposite end of the gym. He strides towards them with great purpose, sneakers making squelching noises each time they leave the tacky floor. Martha glances from him to Vaughn, waiting to take her cue from him. Quiet falls even faster in the young man’s wake; by the time they are close enough together that she can make out the look of cocky determination on his birdlike features, it seems that the entire gymnasium is watching them.

“Abed Nadir,” he says, striding forwards to greet her with a firm handshake. “You must be Martha Jones.”

“That’s me,” she says.

Vaughn taps her on the shoulder. “That’s the Big Cheese,” he informs her in a stage-whisper, before melting back into the crowd.

Martha returns her attention to the man in front of her. His stance is wide, and with his arms folded across his chest, he looks entirely too confident for a man in a refugee camp. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” he says, a challenging note to his voice.

She opens her mouth to respond, but before she can do so, a young woman clutching a clipboard comes bursting through the double doors of the gymnasium and runs up to Abed. She looks as though she is about to burst into tears. “Principal Harmon was wondering if you’re going to be very long; there’s a scheduling snafu with the food distribution happening at the same time as the patriotic rally next week, and we can’t relocate either one to the cafeteria because the Toclafane just leveled half of Denver and we’re probably going to be getting refugees coming through in about three days and everyone’s starting to freak out.” She pauses to draw air, bouncing on her toes and biting her lip.

Abed gives Martha a knowing nod. He turns to the young woman and places a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t you worry. We may have to stick half of Greendale County in the basement to make room, but we’ll get everyone fed and keep those shiny metal bastards off our asses.” He gives her an exaggerated wink. “You go back to Principal Harmon and tell him to hold down the fort. I’ll be over as soon as I’ve got our visitor sorted out.”

The young woman smiles nervously. Then she seems to notice Martha for the first time, and jaw drops. “Hi,” she squeaks.

Abed pats her and lets his hand fall back to his side. “Martha Jones, may I introduce you to Miss Annie Edison, our student coordinator and assistant to the principal here at Riverside High. Annie Edison, the famous Martha Jones.”

“Oh my god.” Annie hugs her clipboard closer. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you — Abed, you should have stopped me!”

“It’s all right,” Martha reassures her. “Really.”

“I didn’t know you were coming! No one told me.” Annie whips her attention back to Abed. “Was I supposed to know? Should I tell the administration?”

“That would be the smart thing to do, wouldn’t it?” Abed says with a smirk.

“It’s okay,” Martha cuts in, because Annie looks as though she is about to start apologizing again. “I’ll need to talk to them too, but I’m actually here to talk to everyone.”

“Are you sure?” Without waiting for an answer, Annie seizes her hand and shakes it. “I’m going to go let them know you’re here, just in case. Just doing my job, you know?” She gives Abed a nod and a too-bright smile. Martha blinks and she is gone, tripping back towards the doors.

“Ah, Annie,” says Abed, watching her go with a fond smile. “She’s a funny kid. The other day I offered her a bite of my sandwich and she looked at me like I’d grown a third arm.”

“She seems to look up to you,” Martha offers.

“There is that. She’s got good taste. But enough about me — to business.” He claps his hands together. “I’ve got to ask: is it true?”

“Is what true?” she asks.

His voice drops. “They say you walk the earth. They say you were the only person to make it out of Japan alive.” He takes a step closer, eyes fixed on hers. “They say that you alone have found a way to defeat the Master.”

She lifts her chin to meet his gaze, aware of their audience waiting huddled on the gymnasium bleachers. “It’s all true.” She looks around, making eye contact with pale, dark-eyed high schoolers and stern-faced adults alike; a group of elderly men and women sit together scowling, and a dark-skinned woman clutches her two boys close about her as if to protect them even though she looks like she’s about to fall about herself. “That’s why I’m here — because I’m going to defeat the Master. And you — all of you — are going to help me do it.”

Murmuring begins again amongst the crowds of people. Martha steps back from Abed to look up and around at everyone. “No, I mean it! It’s not just some inspirational speech so you’ll help me. I need you. See, there’s this man. The Doctor.”

“You mean that man on TV, the one the Master made old?” someone asks.

Something inside of Martha stings at the reminder, and she wants to tell the woman: no, it’s not like that — he was old already — he’s old and brilliant and the Master changed nothing about him but his ability to run around like a lunatic — but she owes them the truth that they can understand. “That’s him. But he’s not just some man the Master made old. He isn’t even a man. He’s our protector, and you — we, all of us — owe our lives to him. He’s very old, and very clever, and he’s been alone for centuries. But not anymore. Now he’s got us, he’s got everyone, and if we all put our minds to it, we can bring him back to defeat the Master, once and for all.”

“We’re going to defeat the Master with the power of love?” The handsome, if ragged, man sitting near the floor raises an eyebrow at her.

Martha gives him the fiercest, brightest grin within her power to summon. “No,” she says. “We’re going to defeat him with the one thing he can’t take away from us. We’re going to defeat him with hope.”

“Oh, well in that case, carry on,” he mutters.

&

Afterwards, Abed taps Martha on the shoulder. “You look exhausted. I’ve got a back room you can use if you want to refuel for a couple of hours.” His eyebrows twitch mischievously. “For once, I don’t mean that euphemistically.” He rests a hand on her shoulder and steers her away from the gaze of the people assembled in the gym, head bent close as though they are merely going away to confer further. Just this one time, Martha allows herself to be led and keeps up with the pretense.

“This is fantastic, what you’ve got here,” she says, once they have moved on into the hallway. “It looks like you’ve done a good job keeping things running.”

He leads her into what looks like a teacher's office, albeit one with a mattress stretched out behind the desk in lieu of a chair. Martha shuts the door behind them. Abed watches her, hawk-like, as she does; and the instant that the lock clicks, he relaxes. Imperceptibly, at first, but when Martha looks again, he appears much younger, so much so that she realizes he can’t be much older than herself. He sits down on the edge of the mattress. “I didn’t do anything,” he says. “Han Solo did.”

Martha takes this as her cue to sit down next to him, easing off her backpack. “What do you mean?”

Abed clasps his hands around his knees. “I'm not a leader. My dad owned a falafel restaurant. I didn't have to worry about whether or not my friends were still alive after the Master came because I didn't have any before this. I'm a nerd. But right now, people don't need nerds. They need a rallying point — a charismatic rogue to talk the talk and give them something to believe in. There are plenty of characters like that; I picked Han because of the whole rebel base angle we've got here. I keep waiting for someone to notice that I'm not even supposed to be a named character in this story, let alone the fan favorite who gets the girl in the end, but no one has so far.” He studies the floor, a small frown creasing his forehead. 

Martha thinks he might be about to cry, and she waits, pretending not to notice, but he simply stays frozen as though he doesn’t know what to do with his face. After a while, Martha copies his pose, letting her head fall forwards. “I'm no one special, either. No, really, I'm not. When I met the Doctor, I was a medical student. That's all.” That had only been a few days before the Toclafane had arrived, a year by TARDIS time. A lifetime ago, now.

“And now you're kind of a Messiah figure for the whole planet,” Abed points out. “Funny how that works out.” He doesn’t sound sad, or envious. He sounds, Martha decides, detached.

“But I'm not - that's not me, that's not what I want to be.” Martha takes a deep breath. “That's what I have to be, because if I don't do it, then it might not get done.” The Doctor's face flashes in front of her mind's eye, followed by her family and Jack, somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean. “Everyone else is depending on me.”

They fall silent. Abed nods, studying her boots. Martha twists her fingers together.

“I get it,” Abed says. “Parallel arcs. Two ordinary people elevated to positions of authority by necessity rather than choice. My character arc reflects yours on a smaller scale, and invites the viewer to contemplate the universality of suffering.” His lips twitch into a small, humorless smile.

Martha isn't sure how to respond to that. She reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder, trying to give him a smile more friendly and hopeful than his. “God, I hope it doesn't work like that,” she says.

“I don't know. I'd like to think that this is a disaster movie, because disaster movies have endings. Real life just goes on.” He raises a hand, palm facing upwards, and contemplates it for a moment before letting his hand fall back into his lap. Martha tilts her head, considering the idea. If all went according to plan, then she would be able to stop this, and it would have an ending, of sorts. And then what? She can’t undo the destruction that the Master has brought down upon the earth; the people who have been scattered and slaughtered en masse, their ways of life destroyed and rewritten — not to mention the damage that the planet itself has suffered as a result of his fleet construction. For a moment, she agrees with Abed. 

And then she remembers New New York, with its smoke and cramped cars and the gridlock that had seemed endless beneath the surface, and with its empty ruins above. She remembers the flow of traffic into the sky after decades trapped underground, dirty fume-filled cabins flying into open air to begin again.

'Nah.' she decides. 'That's the best part — awful things happen, and then we go on. Like us. You can stop being Han Solo, and I can just be a doctor. A proper one, not the time-traveling kind.’

Abed nods. 'I'd like that. I never thought I'd get sick of being Han, but after a hundred and thirty days, it’s kind of lost its appeal.’

Martha huffs with cheerless laughter, because he’s right. She’d been so eager to see the world, to save people like the Doctor did and impress him by doing so; and now, she found herself wishing for nothing more than the chance to finish this. ‘Yeah. I know what you mean. Have you ever thought about, you know, stopping? Not completely,’ she adds, because she’s realistic enough to see the way that everyone in the gymnasium defers to him, like he really is some kind of hero, ‘but just sometimes.’ 

‘I thought about it. I decided it was too dangerous. What if they can tell who I really am, and they get tired of me, but no one else steps up to the plate? It’s better for everyone if Abed stays gone.’ He looks up at the clock on the wall for a moment; then, like a mask, snaps on a more alert expression. ‘I’m sorry. Here I brought you in to rest, and I’ve been complaining to you instead. I’ll tell everyone that no one is allowed to bother you until it’s time to eat.’ He stands, long limbs unfolding.

Martha hugs her knees. ‘Thanks. And … think about it, yeah?’

Abed shrugs. Without further acknowledgement, he leaves the room and shuts the door behind him. When she is quite sure that she is alone, Martha falls back and spreads her arms, stretching herself out on the mattress. Despite the grime, it feels fairly new; and with a sensation like plummeting through empty air towards cold water, she remembers the feeling of her bed when she would collapse onto it after a particularly grueling day interning at the hospital. She squeezes her eyes shut, willing herself not to cry — not here, not now. Soon, she tells herself. Soon, she might be able to go back to that, the kind of exhausted from which she will be able to recover in a day or two; not this exhaustion that seeps into her bones and leaves her breathless with its weight no matter how much she sleeps.

Soon, but not now. Now, she locks the door to the room and checks it for entrances or exits; now, she takes off her jacket and her boots; now, she plunges into dreamless sleep.


	3. Sioux Falls, South Dakota

The arches of her feet ache, and her face is numb with cold, by the time Martha makes it to the hand-painted sign that reads Singer’s Used Cars, hanging haphazardly off of the chain-link fence. Her last contact, a broad-shouldered woman with red hair, had shoved a scribbled set of directions into the trunk where Martha was hidden, just before she was turned to dust. Martha had added her name to the list of people on the Master’s account, and once the Toclafane left, she turned off the motor and continued on foot. That had been early afternoon; the autumn sun had nearly set by now, taking with it what little heat the daytime offered and sending shivers down Martha’s back.

There’s a pair of denim-clad legs in the yard, underneath one of the dozens of cars between her and the house. Martha walks up and taps the nearest ankle. ‘Excuse me?’

The pair of legs jerks; Martha jumps out of the way as a young woman wriggles her way out from under the car with surprising speed. Equally surprising is the gun in her hand, which she points at Martha in a way that suggests she is fully capable of using it.

Martha puts up her hands. ‘Whoa, please don’t shoot! My name is Martha Jones; I’m looking for … um … Bobby Singer. Do you know him?’

The girl adjusts her grip on the gun. “Christo.”

“What?”

“You’re Martha Jones?”

Martha fumbles in her one waterproof pocket for her driver’s license, wedged down at the bottom underneath phone numbers, contact information, and a few useless pound notes. She holds it out to the young woman for inspection. She takes it, and cocks an eyebrow at Martha. “I know a guy who can fake these so well, they might as well have been the real thing.”

Martha isn’t sure what to make of that. She puts it back in her pocket. “Fine, don’t believe me,” she says. “I’ll go somewhere else.” Her feet ache anew at the thought, but she’s dealt with worse. According to her maps, it’s only another two miles to town. As long as she can find something besides cornbread and hot dogs to eat within a reasonable span of time, she can do this.

For some reason, this seems to satisfy the young woman. She sticks the gun back into her hip holster, gives Martha a toothy grin, and holds out her hand. “Jo Harvelle. Bobby keeps grumbling that you aren’t here yet; it’ll be nice to finally get him to shut up,” she says, with no small amount of fondness. 

“I … didn’t know he was expecting me.” Martha shakes her hand. Jo turns away and leads her up the dusty driveway towards a rickety-looking wooden house. “Did someone managed to get a hold of him after all?”

“Dunno. I think he just figures that eventually, everyone important comes to see him.” Jo shrugs with an expression that clearly says, _What are you going to do?_

Martha shakes her head. “Fair enough. That’s why I’m here — a couple of people told me he could help spread the word.”

Jo bounds up the steps and bangs on the door with her fist while Martha hangs back behind her. From the porch, the roof of the house mostly hides the pillars of smoke rising to the south, or the tiny black specks flying through the air around them.

After a moment, a short, graying man opens the door with a glass of water in hand. “I’m coming, I’m coming. No need to bring down the house,” he says to Jo. His eyes slide past her, to where Martha is standing, and then she finds herself on the receiving end of the contents of the glass.

“It’s okay. Jesus, Bobby,” Jo says, while Martha splutters and clears the water out of her eyes. “I checked her already.”

The older man glances between them suspiciously. “You can never be too sure,” he mutters. “Martha Jones, is it? Come in.”

&

Half an hour later, Martha finds herself sitting at a dilapidated kitchen table with Jo, Bobby, and a grim young man who introduces himself as Sam. She does her best not to guzzle the water in front of her, for fear of throwing it all up again, but it’s an effort. In between gulps, she outlines the bare bones of her journey so far. Bobby pelts her with questions about the route she took through Japan, and swears when she tells him about the _shinigami_.

“You knew them?” Martha asks, surprised.

Bobby glares at the label on his dusty beer bottle. “Not the kids — last time I was in Japan was years ago — but Isshin Kurosaki was a colleague of mine. We did good work together, back in the day.”

For what feels like the thousandth time, Martha says, “I’m sorry.” It doesn’t feel like enough. “I’m so sorry,” she repeats.

Bobby shrugs. “Kurosaki ain’t the first friend I’ve lost in the line of duty, and he sure as hell won’t be the last.”

He is silent for the remainder of her narrative. Jo glances at him from time to time, like she’s trying to figure out what to say to be helpful. Martha takes them from Japan to Vietnam, to Australia and across the Pacific Islands to the coast of North America. When she gets to the demon in Santa Monica, Sam chuckles — the first noise he has made since he introduced himself.

“What?” Martha asks.

Sam shakes his head. “Nothing. We’ve met, that’s all.”

“Really? How?”

He frowns at his hands, examining his palms like he’s never seen them before. “It’s kind of a long story. She … you could say she’s a friend.”

Bobby snorts, and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “evil bitch”.

Martha ignores it. “Do you trust her?” she asks Sam.

“Depends. What did you ask her to do?”

“Help me.”

A look passes between Sam and Jo, a reference to some long-standing argument to which Martha isn’t privy. “To take down the Master?” asks Jo, with laser intensity. 

“I’ve got some things that needed doing, and she was the best one to do them,” says Martha. She can appreciate wanting to know what’s going on, but wanting to know doesn’t guarantee that someone won’t get caught and brought in for questioning anyway. 

“To kill the Master,” Jo insists.

“Stone dead,” says Martha.

Sam leans forwards, mania lighting up his eyes in a way that unsettles Martha. From the look that Bobby Singer gives him, she’s not alone. “I knew it. What can we do? What’s the plan?”

Martha looks around at her audience: a small one this time, three more ragged soldiers in a world full of them. “I’m going to tell you a story about a man,” she says, and the words fall in easy rhythm from her lips. “I was at medical school when I met the Doctor. He saved my life the first time we met. There was this hospital — he saved hundreds of people from these aliens — different ones from the Master, because there are billions and billions of them out there — and then, afterwards, he took me to see the stars. He didn’t even stay around long enough to let people know that it was him. They all thought it was a miracle.”

She tells them about the Daleks eighty years in the past, about Dr. Lazarus. She leaves out Shakespeare because she’s found that it strains credibility to mention anyone too famous, but she tells them about the Njinduri that she and the Doctor had discovered in the Marianas Trench three thousand years ago, on one of their last trips before the TARDIS hand flung them to the end of the universe. She doesn’t tell them about the Family, because what these people need right now — what she needs right now — is a hero, a savior of worlds, not a vengeful victor who hadn’t thought twice about the color of her skin or the dozens of young people surrounding them when he decided that he needed a hiding place.

“And all of these times, no one ever knew,” she says. “He’s like that, always. But just this once, he needs our help.” She stops speaking; partially to catch her breath, take a drink of water, but partially because Sam is looking at her with an expression that is halfway between incredulity and pity.

“Look …” he says, and stops until he has the attention of all of them. “No offense. I’m really glad the Doctor’s been out there, making sure aliens don’t enslave us or whatever.”

Martha waits. He shakes his head, the movement casting the shadows under his eyes into sharper relief. “I don’t care. He’s saved us before; great. It wasn’t enough this time. So whatever you’re planning on doing, I really hope it doesn’t all rest on this Doctor.”

Jo’s mouth is twisted like she agrees with him; Bobby’s face is stiff and without expression, but he’s not offering any objections, either. Martha’s stomach sinks. “It’s not,” she says. “It’s on us. All of us. We need to give him a — a boost. The Master’s got him under his control with the same kind of psychic network he’s using on all of us. If we can harness that and concentrate it on him, then he’ll be able to break free and finish this.”

There is a moment of silence.

“You’re sure this’ll work? It sounds iffy to me,” says Bobby.

Sometimes, Martha needs to lie. Most people don’t want to hear that they probably won’t live to see the rocket launch, so Martha tries to soften the blow in most cases. From the expressions of her current audience, she doesn’t think they would buy it. She makes sure to look him directly in the eye as she answers. “I’m ninety-five percent sure.”

“What’s the other five percent?” Jo fixes Martha with a stare that reminds her of the Futurekind, slamming themselves against the gates of the last refuge of humanity.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I honestly don’t know what the Master would do. Which is why,” she continues, in a burst of inspiration, “we _need_ the Doctor. He and the Master, they used to be friends. A long time ago, on another planet. He knows the Master; he knows what he’s like, and if we can give him the strength that he needs, then he’ll kill him this time.”

(Maybe the last part is a lie, but if it is, she’s lying to herself as well as her hosts.)

Bobby grunts. “Clap your hands if you believe.” He sounds as though the words cause him physical pain.

Martha bites back a smile. “Basically.”

“So the Doctor is a fairy,” says Sam through tight lips. He looks ready to stab something, and Martha finds herself tensing in preparation.

Jo smirks. “Told you they existed.” It seems to be the right thing to say: after a moment, Sam relaxes and swats her arm.

Bobby, meanwhile, muses over his glass of water. “That’ll be a tough one to sell,” he says. “Ain’t many people likely to believe in miracles to begin with, let alone these days.”

“You can do it,” says Martha. “You know the people I’m trying to reach better than I do: you can sell it to them.”

He shifts in his chair. “We’ll see.”

&

She leaves the next morning after a breakfast of bagels with the staleness almost toasted out of them. Jo appoints herself the driver to her next destination, which is a mall in Minnesota. “Sam takes too many stupid risks, and Bobby’s got to work the phones,” Jo explains, sounding satisfied as they climb into a sad-looking excuse for an Oldsmobile. Martha looks back at the house, where they have left the two men ensconced with their weapons and charts, and thinks that maybe it’s for the best.

She starts to reconsider when Jo starts talking twenty minutes into their drive.

“I want to travel with you,” Jo says.

“You really don’t,” she says, even as she knows that protest alone is not going to help her.

“Why not? I have just as much reason to want to kill the Master as anyone,” says Jo. “He killed my mom. He killed everyone I worked with. Those metal monsters even got my dog. I can drive you around the rest of the country and get you in with people.” 

Martha has heard this argument many, many times before, and it never gets easier. “I can’t, I just can’t,” she says. “If I took along everyone who’s asked me to,” —

“You’d have an army. You could have stopped the Master months ago.”

“I’d have a dead army, and we’d be no closer to getting rid of the Toclafane,” Martha counters. “I’ve got protection — none of you do.”

“Uh huh.”

Martha looks around for a moment — out the sides, over her shoulder, checking for other life forms and the tinny buzzing sound of the Toclafane — before she pulls the key out from underneath her shirt. “It’s linked to the psychic network,” she says. “As long as I’m wearing it, I’ve got a sort of feedback loop, makes me invisible to the Toclafane.”

“And you’ve only got one of those?” Jo glances away from the road to appraise the key.

Technically, there are two more; Martha doesn’t suppose that they’re in the hands of their original owners anymore. “It wasn’t supposed to be — for this. Things just got … out of control. Me and the Doctor and Jack, we couldn’t stop him like we’d planned.”

“Could be because it was just the three of you, even if your Doctor is a magical alien.”

“I need a certain kind of help. I promise you, this isn’t about glory, or fame, or anything like that. I just want this to be over so I can be with my family and finish university,” says Martha.

“You sure this is the fastest way?” Jo asks.

Martha fills her lungs with the musty air of the car and breathes out. “I hope so.”

They arrive in Minneapolis later that afternoon, after Jo gives the Toclafane a wild excuse about needing to pick up a sister from the hospital that Martha wouldn’t have believed if it hadn’t been for the sudden appearance of a clearance permit that she swears Jo didn’t have when they left. She doesn’t ask.

Like so many other large buildings these days, the mall at which they arrive has been turned into a makeshift refugee camp. The stores have long been ransacked of their goods, and now house close-packed groups of displaced families. Martha and Jo are ushered to the food court by a woman with jutting cheekbones whose copper skin is tinged dully.

“Matt’s getting everyone together now,” she tells Martha. “We’ve been using it as a town meeting place — though you could hardly call this a town, can you?” She chokes back a hysterical laugh. Martha frowns, looks closer at her, and recognizes the glassy eyes and shaking of a fever. From the look on Jo’s face, she’s seen it, too. And Martha may not be a doctor yet — may not ever, if she doesn’t get this right — but she is fully aware of disease progression and group pathology. Close quarters like this, filled with filth and all sorts of pests: she can see where this will end up, and her heart aches.

There’s a podium of sorts set up in front of the Burger King, onto which Martha climbs. Jo stands below her like a security guard, warning people away as the food court fills and the crowd packs in closer and closer. Martha waits until Matt, an enormous man made bloated by poor food, tells her that everyone who is coming is here, and she should begin. Then she raises her hands for silence and clears her throat.

She has nearly finished telling them about the countdown when it happens: high above them, the predatory whirr of Toclafane. They smash the skylights, raining broken glass down on the crowd. The crowd is too closely packed to flee, but that stops no one from trying as six Toclafane descend in tight formation, coming to hover twenty feet above their heads.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” sings one of the hideous little girl voices.

“Martha Jones, we know you are here.”

Martha climbs down from the podium and edges along the wall towards one of the service doors leading to the kitchens. She can’t run, even though every nerve in her body is on fire with fear: if she moves too quickly, even the perception filter might not be enough to save her. “Jo,” she says, just loud enough to be heard. She tugs on her bodyguard’s arm. “Jo, come on.”

Jo pulls her wrist out of Martha’s hand. Martha looks back to tell her to come, to move, and as she does, she watches Jo’s hand move to the back of her waist and retrieve a metallic green pepper-box. Jo makes a shooing motion with her free hand. Their eyes meet for an instant, before Jo swings around to face the Toclafane engaged in scouring the crowd, picking off random people.

Martha moves away. There are people lining the walls, of course, and she weaves past someone just as they are turned to ashes. She Her chest is so tight it feels like she will never breathe again, and all she can think is, _Doctor_.

“Hey!”

She hears Jo’s voice, raised twenty or thirty feet behind her. Martha hears a gunshot, and the collective scrambling noise of several hundred people getting out of the way of the wiry blonde girl with the small green gun. The Toclafane whirring near her flies away, tinkling with childish laughter. 

“Dumb fucks, what’re you looking for?” Jo shouts. “I’m right here.” 

Martha shoves her way through the crowd and opens the service door. 

“Stupid girl thinks we don’t know who she is. _You’re_ not Miss Martha,” says the little-girl Toclafane.

Martha wants desperately to look back, and is afraid to do so. She wants to turn around and go back to save these people, to drag Jo out of the way and throw the key around her neck, too. But this is Jo’s choice, and she is just one of billions. Martha has a mission which she needs to complete, and a promise to the Doctor that she needs to fulfill. She hauls herself out of there as she hears the Toclafane begin to fire, and Jo’s shouting comes to an abrupt end.


	4. Lima, Ohio

Martha searches the cloudy night skies for metal spheres while the man next to her drives with grim determination. Burt Hummel picked her up off the side of I-69 an hour ago; he told her he was a mechanic, heading back to his hometown for the weekend after spending the work week in Chicago. ("You’d think, the man comes to us from God-knows-where, bringing all of this futuristic space age technology — and everything is always breaking down, all the time," he’d added, before falling silent and gripping the wheel with oil-stained hands.)

"Do you have any family you’re going back to?" Martha asks, when the silence begins to crowd in on her. With the temporary reprieve from walking, hiding, running—, things that keep her focused on her surroundings and simple physical movement, her thoughts have room to turn to the next hundred and fifty days; all of the things she still needs to do, the people with whom she needs to meet up and confer. Talking to whoever happens to be nearest, gives her something on which to focus, and her companions usually appreciate a sympathetic ear.

The driver inhales and breaths out, sighing deeply. "Yeah, I’ve got a kid. He’s fifteen.”

“Oh, really? What’s he like, then?”

“He wants to be a fashion designer." Martha smiles a bit at that. The driver continues, "I kept nudging him to work in the shop, you know, make it a family business, but I wasn’t gonna force it on him. Now it don’t matter what he wants."

"I’m sorry," she says.

“He’ll be fine anyway,” says Burt, and his conviction startles her. “He’s a fighter; he gets back up every time he gets hit.” Martha turns to ask him another question, but he is already drawing breath, gaze turned inward in contemplation. She bites her tongue and watches the road, just in case.

At the next exit, he starts to speak again, as though he can’t hold himself back. “You know, when he was in school — back when it was school, with football and cheerleading, not astrophysics boot camp — there were these kids who’d pick on him, every day,” says the driver. “And when the Toclafane came, some of those kids … well, you were there. One-tenth of the population.”

Martha nods, throat closing.

“Some of them didn’t have anywhere else to go. They were scared. But my kid, he’s been great. Better than he has any reason to be. There’s two, three kids living with us right now — their parents were killed, or their homes got destroyed — some of them the same ones who used to throw him in the dumpster, now he’s the one holding them together.” His eyes glitter in the faint glow of the headlights. Martha digs through her pockets, and comes up with a crumpled sleeve from a former shirt. She wrinkles her nose at it, but it’s better than nothing, so she holds it out in offering.

“You must be proud of him,” she says, looking away as he takes the makeshift tissue and wipes his eyes.

“‘Yeah. I don’t know where I’d be if they’d gotten him.”’ He hands her back the sleeve, and she shoves it back in her pocket. “What about you? You got anyone?” he asks, shifting in his seat and readjusting his shirt collar.

The last time that Martha had seen her family, they had clung to each other out of fear, on a ship above the clouds. She doesn’t know what’s happened to them now. “My parents, my sister and brother. And the man I was travelling with, before all of this.”

Burt grunts. ”Friend?”

Martha has to think about it before she responds. “Sort of. He’s the reason I’m doing this. I’m going to save him, and then he’s going to save us.”

Her words don’t appear to have the intended effect. Burt gives her a sad appraising look. “All right,” is all he says. “We’ll be home in about forty minutes.”

They drive in silence for a few minutes. Martha wants to think of something else she can say, something to convince him that there is hope. Her train of thought is derailed by a pair of Toclafane sweeping down the highway towards them. She scrambles to unbuckle herself and duck down before they can approach the truck; Burt, to his credit, doesn’t even flinch as they zip past the windows. He is scowling as Martha unfolds herself and climbs back into her seat.

“First thing I’m doing when they’re gone, I’m going to stand in the middle of the park in a neon track suit and start singing,” Martha says.

Burt cracks a smile. “How are you planning to do that?”

“I’m going to talk to people. Where do you live? I mean — do you have a house, or does everyone live all together?” Martha winces as she asks; try as she might to find a gentle way to phrase it, the question never gets less awkward.

Burt doesn’t seem bothered. “Most people in Lima still have their houses. We’re not exactly a bustling metropolis, so we got left alone for the most part.”

“All right. Well, is there anywhere a lot of people will be meeting tonight or tomorrow — an assembly, a church, something like that?”

He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “There’s the high school; all the administrator’s offices are in the building. The big meeting place is the Protestant church, tomorrow morning.” 

“Can you take me there?”

“Nah, I don’t do church. Never have. But I know some people who still do.” He glances sidelong at her frame. “We’ll go back to my house first. You look like you could use some food.”

&

Burt Hummel’s house is one of the only undamaged buildings on the block, though even its exterior shows signs of wear. Inside, the house is filled with neatly-arranged clutter. Martha follows Burt into his house, making futile attempts to clean off some of the mud crusted onto her boots on the mat inside the door. As soon as the door is shut, a slender, round-faced boy emerges from a doorway which, going by the emanating scent of tomato sauce, can only lead to the kitchen. Relief is etched on his face as he rushes to Burt.

"Dad!" Martha looks between them, surprised: she can find few enough similarities between the two. "They said on the radio that there was a collision on the interstate. I …" He trails off. Martha can pinpoint the moment that he sees her and realizes who she is: his eyelashes flutter, mouth opening and closing, and his eyes fly wide. "Oh, my god," he says, and then, leaning back towards the kitchen, "Puck!"

Another boy — bulkier, sporting a ragged mohawk and a meat cleaver -- sticks his head out. He looks Martha up and down (he's at least eight years younger than her and it's the middle of a crisis and of course he still looks). "Holy shit," he says.

"Hey, language," Burt warns him.

Puck salutes him with the cleaver. "Sorry, sir."

Burt's son steps forward and takes her hand with both of his, and Martha finds herself on the receiving end of an enthusiastic handshake. "Hi. I'm Kurt Hummel. You're Martha Jones, aren't you?"

"Yeah, that's me," says Martha. Hearing her own name spoken with such reverence wherever she goes sometimes gets uncomfortable, but it would be rude to let that show. 

"We’re having beetloaf for dinner. It's like meatloaf, but vegetarian. And I had to substitute for most of the organic ingredients." Kurt's smile slips.

Burt slides an arm around his shoulders and squeezes. "When he told me in sixth grade he was going vegetarian, I thought he was nuts. And aren't I happy for it, now. Price of meat's gone through the roof, and the kid still manages to pull these dishes out of nowhere," he tells Martha. Kurt smiles. Martha looks between the pair of them — the mechanic and his willowy son — and smiles.

"You wouldn't believe the things I've had to eat," she says to Kurt. "Beetloaf sounds fantastic."

"If we don’t burn it," Puck says. "I kind of forgot to set a timer."

The muscles in Kurt's jaw tighten. "I'm sure it'll be fine," he says. "Dad, is it okay if I call Mercedes? Mercedes is my friend," he adds to Martha. His smile is back. "She is going to flip when she finds out you're here."

“Why don’t you show Miss Jones where she’ll be sleeping tonight, first?” Burt says, as Puck retreats back into the kitchen and turns on the tap. 

“You can call me Martha,” she says.

Kurt flushes. “Of course. I hope you don’t mind sharing a room. We’d give you the master bedroom, but my dad gets called up sometimes in the middle of the night.” Fear flickers behind his eyes.

“Are you sure I’ll be safe here?” she asks.

Kurt leads Martha past the kitchen, towards a door at the back of the house with motor-oil fingerprints on the jamb and around the knob. “Well, we’ve kept Puck and his sister hidden here for seven months this Friday,” he says. “Not that that’s the same thing, at all, but we’re not new to this.”

“Why do you need to hide them?” Martha asks. Puck can’t be more than fifteen.

Kurt opens the door, allowing two female voices to drift up from below. “He tried to take down a Toclafane with a baseball bat,” he says, sounding fondly exasperated.

“Oh,” Martha doesn’t know what else to say. Fortunately, at the same time, a female voice below says, “Kurt? Who are you talking to?”

Kurt smiles and leads her down the stairs. “Martha Jones.”

“Don’t make fun of Becky,” says a shriller, younger voice.

They go down into the room. Martha’s first impression of the basement is that a tornado had ripped through a magazine layout, scattering refuse from the streets across the elegant furniture. Only this tornado brought people with it too, Martha reflects. Two girls — one seven years old and clearly related to the boy in the kitchen, the other blonde and small for her age — sit amidst a mess of mismatched clothes, pillows, and papers. They are seated on the floor with a composition notebook spread in front of them, but both look up when Martha arrives. She shifts, self-conscious in contrast between her filthy smelly clothing and the soft cream of the room, doing her best not to look desperately tired. “He wasn’t making fun of anyone. It’s me.”

Kurt steps in front of her. “Miss Jones, this is Becky, and this is Sarah.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Martha says.

Both girls appear dumbstruck. At an earlier time, she might have mistaken their silence for disappointment, but she has no illusions about that now. Whether she is a person or a symbol to the people she meets, she is good enough for them all. So she pretends not to notice their silence and says, “Is there somewhere I can wash up? Or lie down a bit?”

Becky scrambles to her feet. She points to the only mattress on a frame. “You can have Kurt’s bed. It’s okay.”

“Thank you for that offer, Becky,” says Kurt. “There’s running water in the bathroom until eight o’clock, and you can use any of the products that are on the lower shelves over the sink. Someone will come down to wake you up before dinner.” 

Martha manages to remain standing until he, Becky, and Sarah have collected Sarah’s books and left the room. Then she collapses.

&

It feels like only a minute later that footsteps send her flying upright into consciousness. It takes a second to reorient herself — America, Burt Hummel’s house, Doctor is a prisoner on the Valiant, family are slaves, right — and another second to light on the girl standing by the door who woke her up, comically frozen in mid-movement with a pile of clothing in her hands.

“Hello,” says Martha.

“I’m just here — I brought clothes for you. They’re my neighbors’, in case you want to change for dinner,” says the girl.

Martha blinks a couple of times. “Er. Yeah. Thanks. Is the beetloaf done?”

The girl wrinkles her nose. “Yeah. Kurt’s dad’s setting out the table now.” She hovers a moment after Martha has taken the clothing from her. “My name’s Mercedes.”

“Hello, Mercedes,” says Martha. “I’ll be right up. Just give me a moment to change.” At the last moment, she remembers to smile, and is rewarded by a pleased grin in return. 

The new clothing smells like the inside of a closet, which is heavenly. Martha puts on someone else’s concert t-shirt and jeans, and feels a bit less like death for having done so. When she gets upstairs, she finds the dining room filled with more people than she had thought were in the house before she went to sleep. There’s an empty chair in between Burt and Mercedes, into which she slides as Kurt brings out the beetloaf and sets it on the table between the bread and a bowl of sad-looking pasta.

The beetloaf is, objectively, not the best food that Martha has ever eaten — it is, as Puck warned, slightly burnt, prepared from out-of-date canned goods and substitutes for ingredients no longer imported to the Midwest — but she eats it at a real table, surrounded by a motley array of teenagers, children, and adults, in a house with more-or-less stable electricity, and Martha has to force herself not to devour it all at once. She sits back and savors the moment. Around her, conversation ebbs and flows in a way that would almost make her forget why she’s here, save for the subject matter: Kurt’s voice carries across the table as he complains about a carburetor he ordered for his dad’s shop that never arrived from Chicago; on her other side, a middle-aged woman who introduced herself as Carol listens as Burt tells her that one of the men at his workplace got incinerated for sneaking a smoke while on duty. “The guys and I are gonna hold a service on Monday,” he says, and Carol nods with the corners of her mouth pulled down.

Still. A boy in a football jersey listens with a sympathetic ear to a boy whose mannerisms belong more to a fashion designer than a mechanic. Becky forces Mercedes into some sort of secret handshake before she’ll pass her the pasta. Martha allows herself to smile.

By the time that dinner is over, she is ready to fall asleep again. She tries to pay attention to the boy in the football jersey as he complains that the Master’s system of school doesn’t make any sense, he can’t just _pick up_ rocket science and that’s why he’s failing when he’d been at least able to scrape by before, but every few seconds, she has to blink herself awake again. No one seems to want to leave the table; every so often, the murmur of voices will taper off, and then someone asks Martha another question, and this sets off another spate of conversation. Finally, Burt clears his throat and says, “Okay, time to clear the table. Some of us have work tomorrow.” He nods at Martha, who tries — and probably fails — to contain her relief.


	5. Princeton, New Jersey

Martha is in the parking lot of a hospital in New Jersey when her next contact presents herself in the form of a cat. A black feline butts her head against Martha’s leg as she leaves the hospital during the middle of the night, pads a few feet across the parking lot, and turns around, watching her. Martha looks back, and around, but the only Toclafane are those blinking in the night sky directly over the hospital, and she and the cat are the only two organic life forms in sight. She takes a few experimental steps forward.

The cat moves another three yards closer to the edge of the parking lot, turns around, and looks at her again, tail lashing.

Curiosity mounting, Martha follows. They repeat the process — the cat progressing nine or ten feet, waiting until Martha has moved before resuming progress — until Martha is underneath the thin cover of trees lying between the hospital and the road on the other side. Only there does the cat allow her to get closer. She gazes up at Martha unblinking, and Martha gets the strange impression that the cat is trying to tell her something. She crouches down on the ground. 

“I’m sorry. I don’t speak cat,” she says, and immediately feels foolish.

The black cat tilts her head at Martha. Martha tilts her head at the cat. The cat tips her head back, advancing a few paces, and then Martha sees it: the faint blue glow on the underside of the cat’s tags.

“May I?” she asks.

The cat lashes its tail, but doesn’t move as Martha reaches out to flip over the tag. She doesn’t know what she’s expecting — electronic writing? A miniature screen? — something besides the tiny rounded letters which she finds, glowing in the night.

 _Dairine Callahan to MJ_ , it reads. _Track 118 GCT in 3 days_ (and here there is an extra letter, curiously smudged, which Martha can’t read) _transportation provided upon arrival_.


	6. New York City, New York

Doctor Cameron parks the car in the ruins of Grand Central Terminal. The boards that would have given the train schedules are smashed, as are parts of the ceiling, letting in the smoggy daylight. In the middle of the terminal, the clock over the ticket booth has been replaced by a life-size statue of the Master, recently defaced by yellow spray-paint across its face. As Cameron turns off the engine, an unnatural silence descends.

“That’s new,” says Cameron, indicating the paint.

“I think it’s an improvement,” Martha decides. She lets herself be amused by it, in honor of the vandal who is likely now dead for the crime. “Is this it?”

“This is as far as my permit lets me go.” Cameron waves the tag around her neck. “Officially, I’m in Manhattan to pick up a shipment of hypodermic needles. The upper level of the terminal is a tourist destination, but I can’t go down to the tracks.”

Martha nods as she checks all of the straps on her pack. “You’ll be all right, though?”

Cameron shrugs and smiles at her. “I hope so. I just need to make it another few months, don’t I?”

“When the countdown ends.”

“I’ll mark it on my calendar. Only … not really. But I’ll tell my patients.” Cameron starts the engine again.

“Thank you. And good luck.” Martha moves to get out of the car, and is stopped by a hand on her shoulder.

“You’re sure about this?” asks Cameron.

She can’t afford to hesitate with her answers; faith is critical. “Yes,” she says. “Absolutely.”

“Thank you.” Cameron’s expression softens, just for a moment, and Martha catches a glimpse of the person she had been before. 

“Goodbye, Allison Cameron,” she says, opening the door. “Remember. Zero.”

Cameron laughs. “I don’t think anyone will forget it.”

&

The daylight that pierces the ceiling of the terminal doesn’t extend to the lower levels or the tracks themselves. Martha pulls a flashlight out of her pocket and makes her way down the main staircase, gripping the sticky railings for balance. The bottom stairs are half-blocked by fallen masonry that she has to pick her way around, avoiding the furry bodies that squeak past her boots. At one point, she accidentally kicks a baseball-sized piece of stone down three steps, and holds her breath, turning off her flashlight and pressing herself into the darkest corners of the stairwell until she is certain that no one has been alerted to her presence.

The downstairs concourse is in surprisingly good condition. The architecture is intact, although Martha is careful to step respectfully around the scorch marks that her flashlight illuminates. She clenches her free hand into a fist, keeping it tight at her side.

She can tell when she’s found the right track because the black arch under 117|118 is the only shaft lit from deep within by a faint, silvery-blue glow. Martha looks around reflexively for any sign of movement overhead attracted by the light and only when she is absolutely sure that she is alone does she walk onto the track, hand closed around the key.

At the far end of the track, just outside the blue glow, a small, human-shaped figure moves. Martha breaks into a jog to get closer and bring them into view. “Dairine Callahan?” she says into the darkness.

“You got my message. I was afraid Rhiow wasn’t going to make it, or she’d miss you.” Martha comes up short, surprised: the voice belongs to someone much younger than she was expecting. She turns her flashlight on the person she is supposed to be meeting, and encounters a girl of no more than twelve or thirteen, with a shock of red hair hanging around her face and a smudge of graphite across her nose. At her feet is a scuttling, crablike computer with two stalked eyes held close to its body.

“The cat? Is she yours?” Martha asks, eying the computer.

“Rhiow is a coworker.”

Maybe two years ago, Martha would have been puzzled by the term, but as it is, it occurs to her that perhaps the cat people of New New York are not as inexplicable as she had thought. “Oh …” she says.

Dairine nods and gives her an uncomfortable smile, as though she’d like to make the effort to be polite but isn’t quite sure how. She picks up the computer and flips open the cover; its eyes twist around so it can continue to observe Martha as Dairine taps the keys with one hand. “This is my associate, Spot,” she says. 

“Pleased to meet you,” says Martha. 

“Spot, set up the beam-me-up-Scotty spell, we’re heading home. Martha, I need you to feed Spot your information so that we can bring you along.” She passes the computer over to Martha, who awkwardly adjusts her grip on the flashlight to accommodate it. Spot makes it easier by clinging to her arm with his spindly legs. Martha blinks at the screen, which is full of blue writing that looks like a cross between Arabic, and the Gallifreyan script that decorated the consol of the TARDIS.

“Full name, please,” says Spot, and Martha nearly drops him in surprise.

“Oh! Hi. Uh, Martha Samantha Jones.”

“Date of birth …”

Dairine starts to clear the floor around them.

&

Martha is initially skeptical of the information that Spot requires of her, and of the diagrams that Dairine draws on the concrete in chalk. She revises her opinion after all three of them step onto the diagrams in Grand Central and arrive with a bang in a second-floorbedroom with dingy carpeting and smoke-streaked walls papered by space posters. Through the window, a horde of teenagers swarms past, carrying backpacks and sullen faces. 

“How did you do that?” she asks, momentarily fascinated. It seems much more convenient than either Jack’s wrist strap or (she thinks guiltily) the TARDIS.

Dairine picks up Spot. “I’m a wizard,” she says, in the same tone that one might say “I play football” or “I knit”. Martha itches to examine him, but Dairine hugs him close, so Martha tucks her hands under her arms instead. Dairine sticks her head out of the front window, twisting around to look up for Toclafane. Martha leans against the window next to her. They appear to be in a residential community, far enough away from the city that the air isn’t so oppressively smoky, but close enough that the sky is still a yellowish grey color. Martha scans the skies for movement. The more densely populated an area, the most Toclafane there will be, and the Master has made sure that as many populations as possible were made dense. Sure enough, a trio of metal spheres whiz by over the gaggle of teenagers, following them onto their doorsteps to make sure that they go straight home.

“What sort of settlement is this?” Martha asks.

“Shipyards. It used to be a retirement community.” Underneath their feet, the front door bangs open. Dairine leans out the door of the alleged bedroom. “’Mela, is that you?”

Footsteps pound on the stairs. Martha presses herself into the corner closest to the window, so that if anything comes crashing through she won’t be the first thing they see. That doesn’t stop the stocky young woman who comes barreling through the door from spotting her.

“Dairine, what did Mama tell you about bringing home strays?” she says, but her dark eyes sparkle.

“That you never know which ones have rabies,” Dairine replies promptly.

The older girl strides up to Martha and puts her hands on her hips. “Do you have rabies?” she asks. 

Martha edges out from the corner of the room. “No,” she says.

“Good.” The girl looks her up and down in the manner of a drill sergeant. “Who are you?”

Martha is annoyed by her own twinge of confusion at having to introduce herself. “I’m Martha Jones,” she says.

“No you are _not_ ,” says Carmela. She seizes Martha’s hand and shakes it with such enthusiasm that Martha is physically thrown off balance. “Dairine, you sneak, you told me you were staying home sick!”

“It was important, and the Toclafane know we live together.” Dairine hunches her shoulders. “Where’s Nita?”

“She cut gym class to go on a community banana run.” Carmela releases Martha’s hands in order to fling her own into the air. “Or maybe she’s on board the _Valiant_ right now, cutting He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named down to size.”

“You know how it is,” Dairine tells her, and Carmela scowls.

“It doesn’t mean I have to like it,” she says.

Downstairs, there is a bang, and Martha freezes, gaze darting towards the closet door. Both girls turn to the open door, and Dairine’s face lights up. “That’s my sister. She’s not as good at dealing with displaced air when she beams up,” she explains to Martha.

“Oh.” Martha breathes out and tries to calm her racing heart. 

Dairine takes her hand and drags her towards the door, onto the landing and down the stairs. Carmela thumps along ahead of them. Both she and Dairine are careful to avoid, on the last step, the stubborn remains of a soot-colored stain in the carpet. 

The tiny kitchen is just as dingy as the rest of the house, though it is at least clean. More remarkable is the girl of maybe fourteen in the middle, dressed for summer despite the November chill. She bears on her back an enormous red bag, bulging and smelling strongly of bananas and earth.

“Nita, I brought that person you wanted to see,” says Dairine.

Nita waves to Martha. “Hi. Give me a moment, I’m really sorry.” She grunts with exertion as she shrugs off the backpack and struggles not to let it drop to the floor.

Carmela steps forward to help set it down on the table. “I take it your mission was a success, _hermanastra mía_?”

Nita massages her shoulders. “Yeah. Carlos asked about you.”

As a rule, Martha likes to know what’s going on, but she knows the futility of asking — the less everyone knows about what other people are up to, the better. So she stays silent as Carmela and Nita talk about someone named Carlos, and the state of Honduras. Carmela puts the bag on the table, and Nita pulls out a bunch of slightly green bananas. “Want one?” she asks Martha.

Martha’s stomach twists in on itself. “Yes, please.”

“Food before business,” Carmela declares, as Martha catches the proffered fruit and Nita takes her own. For a few minutes, they eat quietly. Nita lists off strings of names — people to whom she made banana deliveries before she came home, Martha guesses, the names meaning nothing to her on their own — and Carmela complains about other things. Martha sits down at the table with the three of them and catches her breath. She leans back in the chair, stops short when it creaks in protest. None of the girls seem to care, suggesting it’s normal and she did not just break their furniture.

When she’s finished, Nita tosses her banana peel into the trash. She reaches into her backpack and comes up, not with more smuggled fruit, but a thick red library book and a spiral notebook opened onto a page covered in rounded, flowing script. Only upon closer inspection does Martha realize that the writing isn’t English, isn’t any earthly language. It looks a bit like a cross between Thai and Gallifreyan; even with the TARDIS translation matrix wound through her brain, only some of the symbols shimmer and reform into legible words.

“Whatcha got now?” Dairine asks.

Nita pores over the notebook, makes a couple of adjustments with a pen that shimmers when Martha looks directly at it. She flicks through the library book, makes a few more notes, and then flips the notebook around so that it faces Martha. “The Tran twins sent me the info on what you’re working on. Me and a couple of other wizards have been looking at it for a while now.”

(During Martha’s stay in Vietnam, she and an entire block of Ho Chi Minh had been hidden from the Toclafane by a pair of twins doing some form of physics that Martha was forced to call magic, for lack of a more accurate term. She couldn’t pretend to understand it, but clearly the reverse had not been true: as soon as she had finished giving them her speech, they had looked at each other and spoken in unison. “Enhanced telepathic field,” they’d said. “You need Nita Callahan.”

“She’s a friend of ours.”

“Colleague.”

“She’s done psychotropic wizardries before.”

“We’d have recommended Othello Cooper but you’d need a large-scale timeslide to reach him before the riots in Montreal,” said the girl. Her face fell, and Martha had been struck by how very young she was.)

“What do you think?” asks Martha.

Dairine drags the notebook around to get a better look. “It looks good to me. Not very efficient, there’s too many minor power conduits and not enough containers in the primary matrix over here.”

Martha peers at the writing, trying to make sense of the way that it loops around the page in a typographic diagram of some kind. Dairine’s finger rests on a series of circular pieces of writing, the tail ends of which wind their way around each other and then join the center, where the writing is poured on so thickly that Martha can’t even distinguish individual symbols. “There’s fifteen satellites,” Martha says, in case it helps.

“Yeah, but we don’t need to target all of them the way that Neets has got.”

“If they weren’t there in the first place, it’d make it a lot easier to _think_ ,” Nita complains, tugging at her hair.

“And if they weren’t there, we wouldn’t be here right now, ‘cause you can bet at least three countries would have tried to nuke the Valiant before the Toclafane could reach them,” says Carmela. “We must harness the power of the Force, Luke.”

Nita smiles wryly. “Thanks.”

“But the basic idea is sound?” Martha asks. “I know that the Doctor must have had some sort of plan, but the network can’t be strong enough to override what the Master’s done to him all on its own. It’s got to be weak enough to allow some free thought, otherwise the human race would all be robots right now.”

Carmela wrinkles her nose. “Which we definitely not.”

“So we’ve got to make it strong enough.” Martha thinks of the Doctor, shriveled and old aboard the _Valiant_ , and of the screwdriver keyed to the Master’s DNA that needs to leave his hand for him to be defeated. “That’s what the Tran twins said you could help me with.”

Nita nods. “We’ve been trying to write a wizardry that will do just that. Our original idea was that we’d disable the network entirely, but the problem is that it’s telepathic.”

“And wizardry is words,” says Dairine.

“And there’s only so much tech you can buy with a Crossings gift card and good faith,” says Carmela.

Martha nods, but the air goes out of her, because she is already almost too tired to think, and she’d had wizards on two different continents tell her that Nita Callahan is the one she needs to augment her original plan. “But I’m not asking you to take down the network. We just need to focus it,” she says.

“Right. And if we amplify the thoughts of five or six billion people, focus them on one person …” Nita has her library book open to a page which is covered in more tightly knitted loops of writing. She describes a few imaginary lines with the cap of her pen, connecting each of them to a central ring.

“Then we can restore him,” Martha finishes. “He can deal with the Master, or at least take the focus off of him. Once the Master falls, there’s no backups, no seconds in command as far as I’ve been able to tell. Nothing to order the Toclafane.”

“Cut off the head!” Carmela holds up her hand for a high-five, which Martha gives her with enthusiasm. “I’d offer a toast if we had champagne, or grape juice or something besides tap water.”

Spot scuttles over and pokes out a couple of eyes. Two examine the open pages of the book; the other examines Martha. Martha gets an uncomfortable itch on the back of her neck.

“Incomplete data,” he says.

“What do you mean?” Martha asks him.

“Focus of telepathic field designated “archangel network” in “countdown augmentation routine” incomplete. More information needed.”

“He’s usually pretty terse with strangers,” Dairine apologizes.

“Are you talking about the Doctor?” says Martha. “I could give you all the information you like on him. I was with him basically twenty-four seven for about a year. He hates pears.”

“He’s got his own entry in the Manual, thank the Powers,” says Nita. She flips to another page in her library book: the writing is horizontal here, and she indicates the first three lines of text. “That’s the condensed version.” Carmela draws the book towards herself, resting her elbows on the table in order to read.

Martha is temporarily relieved, before she is reminded of something else, another question which has been itching at the back of her mind for weeks now. “It’s not going to … change him, is it?” she asks.

“What do you mean?” asks Nita.

“Have you heard anything about him? He’s not exactly …” Martha struggles to explain her thought process. “The Doctor is a good man. He does good things. But he’s not — there are things about him that aren’t so nice. I haven’t been telling people about those parts, obviously. But if that’s all they’re feeding into, when the time comes to bring him back …”

“You think he might turn into something weird,” Dairine translates.

“I need people to have faith. I don’t want to change who he is, not if I can help it.”

Across the table, Carmela makes a noise under her breath. “Am I reading that right?” she asks Nita, pointing to a line of script. “ _ekheth sziweh_?”

A strange expression crosses Nita’s face, a combination of pity and revulsion. “Yeah,” she says softly.

Carmela meets Martha’s eyes. “Yeah, I can see why you wouldn’t want to mention the genocide.”

“Will it change him?” Martha asks again.

Nita chews on her lip, eyes lowered to scan the pages before her. She only looks up at Martha after she has found whatever it is that she was looking for. “When people are thinking about him, they’re not thinking about _him_ , they’re going to be thinking about the hero you’ve been telling them about. And if we’re factoring in the boost to the Archangel Network,” —

“Then you’re not just bringing sexy back, you’re remixing it and bringing it back _super_ sexy, right?” Carmela says, which is somehow not as funny as it should be.

Martha shuts her eyes. Of course.

“Maybe,” says Nita. “The telepathic network should collect all of that and concentrate it on his energy signature, but it’s still the Doctor. It will definitely, well, make him _more_ than usual when the initial burst goes through — there’s nothing we can do to stop that, and it might actually help — but after that, it’ll probably wear off.”

“Probably?”

“There’s not a whole lot of precedent for what we’re doing,” says Dairine. “And psychtropic wizardries are finicky to begin with. That’s why I stick to robots.”

“But it might happen,” Martha says.

“Probability forty-seven percent plus or minus fifteen percent,” Spot says.

Martha can feel her hosts waiting for her reaction. Carmela still looks like she’s deciding whether or not to be horrified; Dairine’s mouth is a thin line; and Nita chews on the end of her pen, studying her library book. The only sound is the hum of Spot’s hard drive and the rumbling of the refrigerator.

She had had an idea of what she was getting into, when she first began to travel with the Doctor. She had seen what he did to people, what circumstances sometimes forced him to do and what he chose to do on his own, even if she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the latter at the time. And Martha cannot be one hundred percent certain what the Doctor would say, knowing how she has been rewriting his name across the planet for the good of all, but he isn’t here right now and she knows what she needs to do.

“Okay,” she says. “I can live with that.”


	7. London, England

Martha dumps a pile of shirts into a cardboard box on her bed that had once held a microwave. “I think I’m going to need that fourth box after all,” she says. “I’ll be right back.” 

“Told you.” Mickey’s voice is muffled from underneath her bed, but still full of affection. He drags out another stack of books that Martha vaguely remembers being given, several Christmases ago. 

“Yeah, yeah, don’t go rubbing it in.”

“I don’t have to be here, you know. I could be going rock climbing with my mates, ‘stead of helping you move out,” Mickey points out. “Oh my god, you’ve got _Harry Potter_ in Latin. What kind of person are you?”

“Shut up,” says Martha, but she is laughing. She jogs down the stairs to the street, where she’d parked her car with its supply of moving materials. She finds an appropriate box — this one the former residence of Christmas decorations, from the scrawled marker label on the side — and runs it back up to her flat for the remainder of her clothing.

When she returns, Mickey is sitting next to the bed with a shoebox in his hands. Not just any shoebox: though it bears no unusual markings, aside from a label which says “2008 — 2009”, Martha recognizes it at once. The blood drains from her face and hands. She throws away the box she’s carrying and drops down in front of Mickey.

“Found this at the back of the bed,” Mickey says, brushing dust off the top and passing it to her. “Didn’t want to open it without you here.”

Martha tries not to snatch it from him. It isn’t his fault: he wasn’t even on Earth that year. She takes off the lid with hands that her medical training keeps from shaking. The shoebox is less than half-full, just scraps of paper and maps folded up small enough to fit in a pocket. Martha trails her fingers through the contents of the box, overturning names, addresses, and phone numbers. They are written in ink, in pencil, and charcoal; they are written on the backs of receipts, on index cards and business cards and leather and cloth; they are written in English and French, Chinese and Russian and Swahili; and they all say the same thing: this is where you will find help. This is where you will find friends. This is where you will be able to breathe for a few scant moments in a year that is mostly made up of fear and loss. As each catches her eye, a memory resurfaces: of the people to whom it refers, or the people who wrote it for her. She is the only one who holds these memories now.

“Martha?” says Mickey.

She looks up. He’s crouched over, watching her face and studiously avoiding the contents of the box. “Yeah?” she says, too quickly.

“Nothing, you just looked like you were sort of zoning out on me there. You want to bin it, or put it in the car?”

There are a lot of answers that Martha could give. She doesn’t think that anyone would blame her for throwing away the memorial to the year that never happened; for one, no one would know what she was talking about. On the other hand, it _happened_ to her, and she can’t say that it didn’t. She gets up, shutting the shoebox. “I’m gonna go find an envelope for all this,” she says. “I can use the box for jewelry and stuff.”

“What’s in it?” he asks.

Martha shakes the contents of the box in her hands and smiles at her companion. “It’s sort of a diary. I went through a period where I kept everything written down on little scraps of paper, but it takes up too much space like this.” She shifts a heap of papers to one side on her desk; she could have sworn that she’d had a bunch of big envelopes somewhere around here … ah, there. Amidst a cascade of receipts, Martha retrieves a manila envelope. She empties the contents of a year of her life into the envelope and squashes it flat, though she can’t quite bring herself to seal it shut. You never know.

She slides the envelope into the box of paper sitting next to her desk. Mickey crawls back underneath the bed to clear out everything else that has accumulated there over the past few years. Martha retrieves the larger cardboard box and deposits in it the rest of her clothing. Together, they spend the better part of the afternoon packing her remaining belongings into boxes and bringing them out to her car. Most of the furniture came with the room, but she’ll come back for the desk and lamps later this week. Today, she climbs into the car with all of her belongings in the back and an honest-to-god friend at her side. The streets of London are busy, chaotic as Martha drives to her new flat under clear skies.

**Author's Note:**

> Hero myths are cool, but they are all too often the realm of attractive straight white dudes, and I am a huge fan of ordinary people dealing with the fallout of heroic catastrophes. Thus, this fic.


End file.
